The Nabe

[caroljane]

I live in the liveabilist part of Toronto, the former East York (Canada's Only Borough!) until we were collectivized by former Neo-Con premier Mike Harris in the 1990s. It is a down-town east area, and when I moved here it was East Chinatown, with a great mix of east Asian restos, two competing convenience stores, an ageless diner, a disreputable pub and a respectable one, and a great Italian practically right next door.  Plus a laundrymat above which I live, which heats the floors in winter and provides an astonishing array of freshly washed clothes which people have forgotten and which go into the garbage after a week, when it is finders keepers.

Alas, alack. Now, eight years later, I apparently live in north Leslieville (the gratingly trendy area two streets below).  The disreputable pub has been restored and transformed into a four-star restaurant with a world-class chef. The respectable pub has gone from an overpriced Scottish sports bar, to a Mexican restaurant with no TV even, and I don't like Mexican cuisine, even  when it is good, which it isn't here. One convenience store has become a trendy coffee bar; the other, which I now call the Inconvenience Store, revels in its monopoly and sells only two of the four daily papers, for good business reasons no doubt.

I am surrounded by edible temptations.  Three  other trendy coffee bars on this block, with another one being renovated to open soon. A barbecue place (formerly a pieiorgi place); sushi , two pizza outposts,a  Perfect Burger  spot, one Thai takeout and the veteran Vietnamese sandwich shop, a rock in an upheaving sea of street meat.

And here I am hungry and none of them appeal. I guess I'll  just make some toast.

My disposable income, of which I don 't have any, approves of that. It's a five-star decision.